Shadows
by Mad Vampire Poet
Summary: Spike follows Buffy one night, hiding in the shadows, thinking how she could never love him.


_**Shadows**_

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She stood by the grave, as she had almost every day since her mother's death. Spike watched her under the cover of the trees, praying to every non-existent deity that she wouldn't notice him. He watched her as she knelt to lay flowers on the dry, yellowed grass around the tombstone. He watched her as she wept silently, afraid to let the world see her pain.

But she couldn't hide from him. He saw everything. Yet he hadn't seen the woman buried. Joyce, who had been the only one to truly treat him as a friend. It pained him that the Slayer despised so much as to have completely cast him so that he could not even attend her funeral. He almost wanted to think that she hadn't even considered him wanting to say goodbye, and perhaps she hadn't; he still thought she wouldn't even let him come. Probably think it was something to do with her, like when he'd brought those flowers to her house and her friends had turned him away.

Yeah, right. He knew he didn't have a chance. She'd hated him since she'd first laid eyes on him - only made sense really, seeing as he'd been trying to kill her at the time - and it seemed, even more so after he'd told her that he loved her. Looking back, he couldn't believe his own stupidity. Offering to kill Drusilla, his sire and lover of over a century... It meant nothing to her, though to him it was like killing himself. Worse, even.

He didn't know how long he stood there, watching her, nor did he know how long she sat crying by the grave. He wanted to reach out and touch her, comfort her, caress her, tell her that everything would be alright. But he didn't, partly because she wouldn't believe him, but mostly because she'd probably stake him and he wasn't feeling much in the mood to get killed tonight. So he didn't go to her, no matter how much he wanted to.

He stayed in the shadows, watching her, hoping more than anything that she would come to him, cry to him, make love to him in the shadows of the trees. He would have laughed aloud at that thought had he not risked alerting her to his presence. It truly was a laughable idea that she could ever love him. Was he so out of his mind as to forget all he had done? That, more than once, he had tried to kill her? Kidnap her friends? No, he couldn't forget anything engrained in his memory so clearly. Of course she hated him; he had practically done everything in his power to make sure of that. Hadn't he thought of draining her dry? Snapping her neck like a twig? And now he followed her like a dog. Pathetic really.

Just as she rose to her feet, drying her eyes with her sleeve, he turned away and began to walk back to his crypt. He heard her footsteps retreating and then a sound like a gunshot in the silence as he stepped on a fallen branch. They both stood still and she called his name softly, questioning. But he was gone before he could answer her.

It was strange, he thought, that even the cemetery was full to bursting with the life it held. Tiny insects, making the night silence bearable. In the distnace, all kinds of other things, not that any human would be able to hear them from there. He strode into his crypt and slammed the door, relishing the total destruction of that silence before it enveloped him like a shroud within the stone walls.

He was home, but it didn't feel like home to him. He hadn't truly been home in over a century. He had felt almost like he was home when he was with Drusilla. She had been his home, after she had stolen him from his original one. But now she was gone, and he had no place to call his home, no person to make it feel like one. He was alone, terribly alone and he feared he would never be home again.

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 **So, this was my first attempt at anything that could be considered Spuffy. And probably my last. I wrote this ages ago, but it was handwritten and I've only just typed it up. And wow, it look short on here. This filled just over a page on a piece of paper and I have tiny writing. Anyway, if anyone reads this, please tell me what you think. And if you read my other stories, feel free to complain about my lack of updates.**


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